Web Concordances

Web Concordance - Help

This is the help file for your Web Concordance.

You can adapt it to your own requirements by editing this file, help.htm, with any HTML editor.

The help text below applies to the original, five-frame Web Concordance layout.

How to use the system

Using Frames - the parts of the window

Your browser's window is divided into five regions called frames. All the frames can be re-sized: if you let the cursor hover exactly on the border between two frames, it will change to a re-sizing cursor which you can drag to reposition the border. You could enlarge this frame now to make this Help page easier to read.

What the Frames do:
At the top right of the browser window is the Text Frame, which displays the original text of the work you have chosen to explore. You can use the scroll bars to move around in the text. Clicking on a Reference in the Concordance frame will make the Text Frame scroll automatically to display the relevant part of the source text.
To the left of the Text Frame is the Wordlist Frame, containing an alphabetic list of all words which are used in the source text. Clicking on a Headword in the Wordlist Frame will make the Concordance Frame scroll automatically to display all the instances of that Headword, together with a line of context for each.
You are (probably!) reading this in the Concordance Frame. When not displaying this help, it displays the Concordance. If you have clicked on a Headword in the Wordlist Frame, the Concordance Frame will have scrolled automatically to that Headword. Beside each Headword is a count of the number of times it occurs, and below it are all the actual occurrences, each in a line of context. To the right of each context line are References. Clicking on a Reference will make the Text Frame scroll automatically to display the relevant part of the source text.
The frames down the left edge of the browser's window are the Alphabetic Navigators. They provide a quick way of controlling the frames to their right, so the upper one controls the Wordlist Frame and the lower one controls the Concordance Frame. Click on a letter in an Alphabetic Navigator to go quickly to the words beginning with that letter. If a letter of the alphabet is missing from a Navigator, that is because the original text contains no words beginning with that letter. If you have chosen to sort your wordlist by frequency instead of alphabetically, the Wordlist Navigator contains links to words which occur with a particular frequency instead of words which begin with a particular letter.

Hints: how to get more text on screen at a time

A Web Concordance puts a lot of text onto the screen. You may find yourself wishing you could see more text at once and had to scroll around less.

There are several ways to improve things:

Turn off the bits of your browser which you don't need. Unnecessary toolbars and buttons use screen space.
Choose a smaller font.
Re-size the frames so that the one you want to see more of is larger. All the frames can be re-sized: if you let the cursor hover exactly on the border between two frames, it will change to a re-sizing cursor which you can drag to reposition the border.

Searching for a word

The Alphabetical Navigators in the left-hand frames are quick ways of scrolling the Wordlist frame and the Concordance frame to words beginning with the letter you want. From there you can browse, using the frame's scroll bars, to find the word you want. (If you have chosen to sort your wordlist by frequency instead of alphabetically, the Wordlist Navigator contains links to words which occur with a particular frequency instead of words which begin with a particular letter.)

You can also use your browser's Find button to carry out any search. The search will happen in the frame you last clicked in. To let the system find a word for you in a single operation, first load the entire Wordlist (see More Wordlist controls), then press the Find button. The Find button will also work for searches in the Text Frame and the Concordance Frame, but bear in mind that only one section of the Text or the Concordance will be loaded at any one time, so searches with the Find button will be confined to that section.

Control buttons in the Wordlist, Concordance, and Text frames

and

take you to the next and previous lines in the Wordlist, the Concordance, or the source text, loading another section to do so.

and take you backwards and forwards through the Wordlist, Concordance, or Text a section at a time.

moves you to the top of the current section of the Wordlist, Concordance, or Text.

More Wordlist controls

At the top of the Wordlist you will see either the

button or the

button. They are opposites in their effect.

This button appears at the top of a section of the Wordlist when only one section of the Wordlist is loaded. Pressing it will cause the entire Wordlist to be loaded at once. Loading the entire Wordlist makes searching easier, since searches are otherwise confined to the loaded portion; but it will probably slow down other aspects of your browser's performance.

This button appears at the top of a section of the Wordlist when the entire Wordlist is already loaded. Pressing it will cause a single section of the Wordlist to be loaded instead. Loading the Wordlist a section at a time will speed up most aspects of your browser's performance, but will mean that searches for words in the wordlist will be confined to the loaded portion.

When you have finished with this help, you can reload the concordance into this frame by clicking on any letter in the Concordance Alphabetic Navigator or any Headword in the Wordlist.